It is as it usually is.
When something happens in Södertälje, the nationwide media come to the town hall and photograph the chairman of the municipal board, Boel Godner, on the roof terrace of the town hall with Södertälje's silhouette in the background.
Now things have happened in Södertälje again. After 15 years, Boel Godner will leave municipal politics.
She has been the face of Södertälje for 15 years. During that time, she has argued with all sitting governments about the Ebola law, demanded a census, abolished the law on freedom of choice in the domestic service (LOV) and was angry with the then Prime Minister Stefan Löfven for never acknowledging the genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
But mostly she has talked about the ebo legislation, which gave asylum seekers in Sweden the right to settle wherever they want in the country during the asylum process. In some years, Södertälje received six percent of all the country's refugees and every fourth refugee who came to Stockholm County.
- People discovered immigration in the rest of Sweden in 2015, while we had had our great reception for ten years before that, says Boel Godner.
It might annoy her.
- Begging could become huge in three days, but the ebo law could not become so in ten years. It is completely impossible to understand.
Boel Godner has thought about why.
It took more than ten years and three party congresses to get the Social Democrats to support her proposal to abolish the Ebola law. In the end, it was the Tidöparties that changed the legislation, you are no longer entitled to benefits if you do not live in the Migration Agency's accommodation.
Boel Godner is still not completely satisfied. There are still people coming in disordered forms, she says.
She has "been in all governments", she says, not just the S-led ones.
She was frustrated that no one saw the problems caused by the legislation. Segregation only increased.
It was different when the begging issue became big, she says.
- But the difference was that then the beggars also sat outside the journalists' homes, people who do not live in Södertälje. Journalists and decision-makers throughout our country saw it: "Oh, this was so hard, my God," says Boel Godner and continues:
- There was nothing against the segregation that emerged in 14 of Sweden's municipalities, I must say.
It's drizzling over the town hall. Below the city hall, the construction of the new lock is underway, less circumscribed than the one at Södermalm in Stockholm.
Organized crime in Södertälje has been present throughout her time as chairman of the municipal board. Shortly before she took office, two brothers were shot dead at the gambling club Oasen.
Later, 17 people were convicted of involvement in the murders.
Crime has been violent, but also linked to municipal welfare.
In 2014, the municipality abolished the law on freedom of choice in home care (LOV) after extensive welfare crime was discovered. Leading people in the company were sentenced to prison terms and millions in damages after embezzling money.
Södertälje has received a lot of attention nationally because of the welfare crime.
In 2021, she herself wrote a text in the social democratic Tiden.
She painted a dark picture of Södertälje during the early 2000s.
The economy was bad, school results lousy and businesses stayed away. Instead, organized crime grew, she said.
"We have seen the worst possible consequences of Swedish naivety. By naivety I mean that laws were passed which were meant to increase the freedom of different groups in society but which had disastrous consequences," she wrote.
According to her, Södertälje had tried to do something about it. Building permit officers who accepted bribes had to stop, the police were asked questions about what the municipality needs to invest in before each budget, and social services received more money to combat domestic violence.
She continued:
"Now Sweden is in the situation that Södertälje was in ten years ago and partly remains in. Shootings, alienation, unsafe living environments, increased xenophobia and fraud against the welfare systems."
- Not all municipalities want to talk about such things or do anything about it, because it is troublesome. Politics has to step in for that. It is not possible to just send the civil servants forward without the politicians standing behind them, she says.
Sometimes the methods have been controversial, such as in 2022 when the municipality began doing background checks on its 7,000 employees.
That had to be stopped after serious criticism from the Ombudsman for Justice, JO.
Several of the unions demanded damages for their members. The municipality had to stop the checks, but Boel Godner hopes they will return.
She believes that there was a fear among other municipal politicians that their municipality would get the same stamp as Södertälje.
- Södertälje is not a criminal municipality just because there is crime in the municipality. On the contrary, we are a municipality that works against crime every day, says Godner.
Boel Godner has been photographed on the roof terrace for the last time as chairman of the municipal board, at least by DN.
Sometimes she has been annoyed at how Södertälje is rewritten, she says.
She is bothered by how some try to paint Södertälje as a horror example of what happens if immigration is too great. It makes her frustrated, she thinks the municipality is one of those that has come the farthest in the fight against organized crime.
- When there is a murder in, for example, Huddinge, then it says that there was a murder south of Stockholm. But when it happens in Södertälje, it says damn me Södertälje every time on the front.
It's quiet up on the politicians' floor in Södertälje city hall. Many of the civil servants are on autumn holiday leave.
When she is formally voted out and dismissed in December, she will go on holiday with the grandchildren. Then she doesn't know what to expect. Her party has backed down both nationally and in Södertälje throughout her time in power.
In 2010, the Social Democrats had over 36 percent in the municipal elections. In the last election, S got 28.6 percent.
She does not want to review the party or pre-empt the post-election analyses, but she thinks she sees a connection between the Social Democrats' loss and SD's rise.
What do you think is the way forward for the Social Democrats?
- I always think that we should be involved in welfare issues and try to save the welfare that exists in Sweden, but also that we should push for things that we shouldn't have. Abolishing LOV for example, things like that. They call it freedom of choice, but it isn't. It is freedom of choice for companies, not for people.
She sounds pretty much the same as she has for the last 15 years.
- Sweden has been very proud of our order and order and that everyone knows where everyone lives. The right person at the right address, but it's not like that.
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